Light and spaces in the interior design

NEWS	PHOTOGALLERY

In the nine years since I first opened my studio in Rome, I have been lucky enough to come across many, many designs for the big Italian and international yards and have developed boats from 18 to over 70 metres. I love my work and I give it my all.

Right now I’m finishing off two 44-metre megayachts in England, a 40-metre in Holland at the Hakvoort yard and a 72-metre at the Viareggio Superyachts yard in Tuscany as well as another boat at Alfamarine in Fiumicino. With each of these jobs, my essential tools were extreme attention to the distribution of the spaces, details and colours, and a focus on finding technical solutions that would enhance natural light. Each and every time, in fact, I try to create a clean, elegant style that will give the boat a strong personality even though I still respect the owner’s wishes.

Listening carefully to the owner’s needs and respecting his tastes is the real starting point for my work.

The job of an architect is to interpret the volumes, develop hidden potential, imagine unexpected synergies between interior and exteriors, use colour to underscore the décor style in an innovative way. Design always looks ahead, goes in new directions, and is resulting in a new concept of space which centres around natural light which is enhanced by audacious glass designs and unexpected artificial light sources. A new philosophy of onboard living is spreading: environments are being redesigned to create movement that converges towards the light source.

There is no break between al fresco and enclosed spaces: thanks to carefully designed windows, the sea and landscapes of the voyage are framed and poured into the interior as if they were living paintings.

Volumes spread over several decks, creating a shared language and high-impact elements, link the spaces in an unexpected way thus creating an extremely original harmony of forms. Doing the layout and interior design for a boat means starting from powerful primary elements, such as the sea and light. The latter shouldn’t be seen as an entity in its own but it does have a powerful presence in a natural setting and any design must take that into account.

I chose to enhance this source of energy. It creates living, original spaces and dimensions, gives life to shapes that would otherwise not exist, opens up reality and makes it visible.

When light has been developed to its ultimate, the next step is to try to ensure it is in perfect harmony with that other natural element, the sea. The elegance of the design and a search for luxury and prestigious details go hand in hand with the need to be in harmony with the water. The spaces have to be open, very large, just like the sea. Often white dominates as it’s the colour of sails and the crests of waves. The lines of the furnishings have to be strong yet always, always simple. Designing a yacht means interpreting both the sea and light. It means closely observing the potential of the interiors and studying the spaces. Keeping a process of osmosis between boat and nature ongoing in which nature is embraced and reinterpreted in the interiors and the volumes and furnishings are in complete equilibrium with the external forms. That is my design philosophy. It is why I always try to achieve complete harmony between forms and dimensions and absolute proportions between the more powerful natural elements and the more extreme and technological architectural solutions. That is the very important lesson that I learned from Eero Saarinen: “Always design a thing by imagining it in its broadest context: a chair in a room, the room in a house, the house in its setting, its setting in the city.”

I like to think that I can offer my clients the fruits of a lot of imaginative work. Even when I am designing the tiniest detail I never want to forget that even that little thing will be added to enhance the room which is itself part of a larger space which is then part of an even bigger whole that is set in a world of light and in harmony with a universe of sea.

Architetto Michela Reverberi

(Yacht Design, n. 4/2009)